Everybody on the block was woken around 4am on the 8th of June 2003 by a CRASH TINKLE SMASH … PPTT-PPTT-PPTT PPTT-PPTT.
“Did you hear that?” “YES!!” “That’s what real guns sound like.”
We crept to the front window, peered out at the cop cars and flashing lights and the huge white car smashed through our front fence. Walked out the front door and looked at the neighbours all standing at their fences and the urgent policeman shouting “go back inside your houses.”
We went back inside our houses.
The next morning the car was gone, the street was blocked, there were four police cars, cops going door to door interviewing people, giving out incident numbers, promising that damage would be assessed. Little yellow triangles sitting on the road where the bullets had landed.
We believe the car had been chased from Rose Bay, they set up a road block at the stop sign on Old Canterbury Rd and Cook St, the driver lost control and hit our fence. They shot at him right outside our bedroom windows, he jumped out and ran up Parramatta Rd where one of the cops tackled him.
By the end of the day they were gone. There was one small news article. Nothing was ever heard again.
When people ask why I don’t fix the front fence, I say it’s the only witness to the police shooting of 2003. Now there is a street library, with a diorama of the scene, and books about miscarriages of justice (and whatever else people chuck in there).
